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Derwent Walk, late September 2011
The Commercial got off to a strong start on Tuesday night and won the opening Team game. They maintained their decent scoring in the remaining legs but their finishing seemed to desert them, and several times we were allowed to win points in which we were trailing at the mid point. One notable exception to this was Kris' Singles game where he played solidly throughout but still lost what felt like the quickest game of the night.
The majority of our 7 points were scored by three of us who each sank two winning doubles, but Man Of The Match goes to Roger for his memorable 68 finish on The Bull. The importance of finishing was yet again apparent on Tuesday, and Roger's finish was the highlight for us.
Ebchester's sunset on Tuesday night
On Tuesday night we played The Commercial who are now playing from The Coach and Horses pub. As with Blackhill Club they have also chosen a new Winmau Blade 4 board this season, and I still haven't seen a single bounce out on this model so my early impressions of it are favourable.
All ten of the games on Tuesday were close with neither side dominating. We were well matched with the points being shared throughout the night. Either team could make it a win in the return leg with just a bit more accuracy, so we'll see how that one goes.
Michael was our Man Of The Match, narrowly edging it for higher finishing on his two point winning doubles. Alan also won two points, with Kris getting the other one in his Singles game.
Picture : Derwent Walk, Summer 2011
We played much better than last week but so did Blackhill and they increased their margin of victory by a point. It's good to make improvements from last week, but both teams can play better than this.
It was an enjoyable game as always against Blackhill, with some good highlights to report too. Graham from Blackhill hit a 180 and a Bull finish in his Singles game against me, Alan P somehow recovered from a first dart of D17 to complete his 63 finish, and Peter's 96 finish in 2 darts were probably the most memorable events.
On a personal note from me it was so strange to play without nicotine (I stopped smoking on 25/8/11) plus the shoulder injury from a cycle accident two weeks ago which has prevented any practice, but I was really pleased to play a reasonably solid game. I thought I'd miss the usual pre and post match cigs. I will however be marking the board whenever possible to keep these idle hands busy :o)
Finally, congratulations to our friends from The Shepherds. They have made the finals of the Pubmaster competition, to be played in Coventry on 22/10/11. Also, we're sad to hear the news regarding Lawrence Bell from their team. See the comments in The Shepherd's Progress post for details.
A practice shot
What a relief to get our first points of the season Away to a team who whitewashed us 10-0 in the exact same opening day fixture last season.
As always with the darts, we actually played a very ordinary game but somehow managed to get 4 points. Last season we played out of our skins but couldn't buy a point, and that is just the way it goes.
Our 4 points were evenly spread within the team and our first Man Of The Match goes to Michael for getting the finishing double in his Doubles game plus our highest scoring Singles game, despite ultimately losing this one. There were pleasing Singles wins for Peter and Kris too.
I had a bad fall from my bicycle last Tuesday morning where I took the brunt of the impact on my right shoulder. I have difficulties putting a shirt on, but I threw OK on the night so no complaints :o)
Blackhill are now using a Blade 4 board which looked as beautiful as it played - congrats to Nev for choosing this one. I've not played on the Blade 4 before and I was impressed.
Signals like this did not help us in the Doubles games surprisingly
We were whitewashed again in the Return leg against The Shepherds of Houghton Le Spring on Sunday night. I was unable to attend due to a prior arrangement. Ronnie Scheu from their team very sportingly took my place and was trying hard for our cause by all accounts.
Still not a single point for us from the eleven on offer, but Peter McLean from our team scored a 180, and Micheal forced a deciding leg in a "best of three" Singles match, and I'm afraid that is the sum total we could manage against another very strong display from The Shepherds.
I hope Paul from their team can keep us posted with their progress in this cup competition. I'd be disappointed if they didn't make the finals at least. They have made a real impression on us.
Alan (left) collects the Player Of The Season trophy
We were very convincingly whitewashed 0-11 last night by an excellent Sheperds team from Houghton Le Spring. Their scoring was high (averaging over 100 per throw including the finish in one of the 701 legs) and their finishing rarely took more than one visit to the board. In most of the legs we were too far behind to put any pressure whatsoever on their finishes. One 88 finish was picked off in two darts (T16, D20) and was typical of their accuracy.
So, outclassed and we never had a sniff of a point all night. Kris probably came the closest by forcing a "best of three" Singles game into a deciding leg, but that was it for us!
Regards to Paul from their team who mentioned he had seen this blog prior to the match. I noticed he took a T20 route on a 101 finish, again because there was so little pressure there was no need to take the T17 route. The return leg is next week and I have no idea what sort of odds you'd get on us whitewashing them to force a play off. National Lottery type odds spring to mind.
Downtime indeed, although we do have a cup match on Sunday night at The Chelmsford. We're through to the third round due to "byes" in the previous two rounds, and I never think that's a good thing - I'd rather play the games.
So those new green polo shirts will be worn on Sunday night and I'll be presenting the Player Of The Season 2010/11 trophy to Alan - pictures to follow. The trophy is the same as last year's, with different dates of course :o)
First of The Summer Wine (Raspberries)
We had the end of season Presentation Night up at Blackhill Club on Tuesday night. The entertainment was provided by local band The Notice and they went down well with many of us.
Alan Parkin from our team collected his Dominoes Singles to retain this trophy for The Chelmsford following Colin Carr's success last year.
We'll still be meeting up for Tuesday nights darts in the close season, but we don't have anything like last year's Finishing School planned. I'll be doing my usual practice, and I'm hoping to come up with a golf type practice game where hitting the correct Singles is important, because we always have Bob's 27 to practice the doubles on. Details to follow soon.
The Derwent WalkThere's nothing much happening at the moment. We have Presentation Night next Tuesday at Blackhil Club though, where Alan P will be presented with his Singles Dominoes Trophy, which is our highlight of an otherwise settled season for us.We had a practice night tonight with a good turn out. Perhaps we were lucky not to be fighting for League points on that display to be honest, but a good night nonetheless.
Deb wearing the new team shirtHere's the new team shirt Angela bought for the team. I think they're great.
The Chelmsford has always been known as The Knack for some reason, hence the embroidered name. Let's hope they bring us luck. We've played in them twice at the end of the season with decent results.
By The Steppy Stones, Ebchester
We finished the season up at Chopwell Central with another very welcome 5 points against the 2nd placed team. After losing the opening 1001x Team Game we briefly found ourselves in a 1-2 lead before sharing the Singles points between the two teams. It was down to Roger to throw our last darts of the season and equalise at 5-5 with a 40 outshot (D5, S2, D14)
It is a great place to play, but I find their Nodor Supabull II board causes plenty of bounce outs due to the large rounded wiring, and there were certainly plenty on the night. Great hospitality as always from them, including a tray of Aftershocks, which was a great touch!
Peter and Alan share the Man Of The Match award for us, sharing four of the match winning doubles with some good play. This means the Player Of The Season goes to Alan, who played in every match of the season and racked up 40 Brownie Points. The trophy is being engraved!
Firstly, sincere thanks to our Landlady Angela who has bought darts team Polo shirts for us all. They're great and I'll post a picture soon.
We did really well to get 5 points against the League's 2nd placed team on Tuesday. I must admit we seemed to be getting the odd bit of luck, with any wayward T12 / T18 / D20 shots going our way, but we still had to finish well and take any chances which arose.
Michael was a very clear Man Of The Match, hitting three of our five winning doubles, including the final dart of the night to get the draw with a well grouped shot at D4. He has made a late dash at the Player Of The Season trophy, although the 4 point gap may be difficult to overcome with just one game remaining. Prior to the final game of the season the main runners are :
1) Alan - 37 points
2) Kris - 36 points
3) Peter and Michael - 32 Points
Picture from nearby Newlands, May 2011
We didn't play well on Tuesday and The Wheatsheaf did enough to get the win, despite playing to a lower standard than their usual too. We really wanted to finish the season strongly at this late stage in the season, but it just wasn't happening.
The highlights from The Wheatsheaf were two 180's, from Rocky and Shaun. From our team Peter played the best Singles match and finished in 18 darts. Our Man Of The Match was Michael, who provided the finishes for half of our wins on the night (a D20 in the Doubles game and a D8 in the Singles).
We are missing a few regular players for the penultimate game at Home to Chopwell Central on Tuesday so there may be some opportunities for the Dominoes and Darts specialists to swap disciplines.
We did quite well to get 4 points on Tuesday. We were hitting the odd good shot but not getting true consistency, and we quickly found ourselves 3-1 down. A good showing in the final 6 Singles games was almost enough to see us sneak a draw, but I think the result was a fair one.
The main highlights were from the Wheatsheaf players, with a 180 from Rob, and a very stylish 120 Shanghai finish from Shaun who had to step well to the right to get his last dart in. Our best effort was a 72 finish from Alan (S20, S20, D16) with the rest of our finishes being under 50.
I'll hold back on a Man Of The Match for us this week as none of us really excelled, and this keeps things really tight for the result of our Player of The Season trophy. It is "as you were" from the last post, and looking like a two horse race between Alan and Kris.
We have a Race Night at The Chelmsford on Saturday night 28th May 2011 in support of the darts team, and I hope the Champions League final does not lose us any support for this event. At least you can mention any one of the darts team on Twitter without flouting a super injunction, and you won't catch any one of us messing about with glamour models - we're really noble like that :o)
We had another enjoyable game on Tuesday night in the return game against The Commercial. The scoring carried on from our Away leg last week with all of the games being evenly contested and the overall result was only decided in the final Singles game of the night.
Although we had a 5-2 lead at one point the games were all too close for us to feel confident in a win, and a strong finish to the match from The Commercial left it all riding on the last leg.
One pleasing aspect for us was another win in the opening 1001x Team game, giving us a 77% success rate in this for the season so far. Usually we struggle to get the 50%, so these are useful points that have helped us reach 4th place in The League.
Kris was a very clear Man Of The Match, hitting half of our wining doubles in one of his best games of the season. This has put Kris joint top of the Brownie Point League, tied with Alan on 35 BPs. Peter (30 BPs) can catch them if they slip up in the final few games, but it appears to be a three horse race for the Ebchester Darts Player of the Season 2010/11 Trophy.
Practicing "Tops"
Sadly, The Commercial was closed and demolished last year, but the good news is that the team stayed together and now play from The Coach and Horses in Leadgate, playing under their original team name.
There have been changes in the Coach's layout. They no longer use the raised oche which I preferred due to the throwing line, but no complains with the new Blade 3 board they now use on the other wall, and as expected with such a decent board there was just one bounce-out on the night.
We won an opening Team Game where we had built up a lead to get down to the finish first against the darts. The remaining nine games were far closer though, and The Commercial checked out their finishes better than we did, taking a 5-2 lead. We had to press really hard to take the final three Singles points and get a draw which had seemed unlikely at the halfway point.
There was some good scoring and finishing from both teams. The Commercial registered a 180 in the first Doubles game with their next score being a ton to make a real dent in the 701 required.
The Derwentside "B" team were a player short due to work commitments and this resulted in them giving us a "bye" point in one of the Singles games, a huge advantage in one of the Doubles games, as well as a free throw to us in each cycle of the opening Team game. Such a pity, as this would have been a very close game without this unwanted advantage.
Still, a good night of competition on another very warm April evening up at our place. We pushed our average to a 75% success rate in the opening Team game, which is a decent stat for us. It was 1-1 after the first Doubles game though, and good scoring with low finishes seemed to be the way that most of the games went.
Kris takes Man Of The Match for us with 36 and 48 finishes in his Doubles and Singles games respectively.
The Gateshead Millennium Bridge
Tuesday's game against The Derwentside "B" team played in a similar way to the ones against their "A" team, with both teams taking points in flourishes.
Our opening 1001x Team Game was excellent, with an average score of over 73 per throw including the finish, which was 89 in two darts from Mickey.
We took a 0-3 lead, then it was 2 to them, 2 to us, 2 to them before we took the final Singles point for a narrow win. I thought we were strong in the first few games but from that point they were all in the balance and it was another good night of darts at The Derwentside.
Mickey was a very clear Man Of The Match for us, hitting half of our winning doubles with precise finishes on 89, 32, and 40.
Pictured : A "Baby Ton Eighty" on the practice board
On Tuesday night we were knocked out of the Team Cup competition by Blackhill Club after we won only a single Doms game and a total brush on the dartboard. No complaints, and BC were as strong as usual.
The previous evening we played our Home leg against The Ox Inn, which had been rescheduled due to bad weather in late January. Despite the long gap between the two games we picked up where we left off and repeated the 7-3 scoreline, although this time we had a "bye" awarded in a Singles games due to one of their party receiving an urgent message.
The scoring was quite erratic for both teams. It seemed every god shot was followed by a clanger, and there were quite a few scores which barely broke double figures mixed in with the tons and steady 60's.
Our Man Of The Match was Mick, who despite losing his Singles game was the only player to hit two winning doubles, including a innovative 13 finish of T1/D5 !
The Quayside, Newcastle
Another great game to report between our two teams. We started very well and took a 3-0 lead, but the Derwentside took the next four points to take a 3-4 lead. With Kris getting our only Singles point in the six Singles games The Derwentside completed their come back for a win on the night.
There was plenty of effort on display from both teams, and some good scoring too. Our winning doubles were spread evenly between four players, but I'll award MOTM to Kris for the all important Singles point which should have been the basis of at least a draw for us if we could have followed suit.
Well done to Colin for his one dart X8 finish in the opening Team Game. Colin only plays when we are missing a regular, but he played a straong game all night.
Derwent Walk, late September 2011
